Saturday Evening Posts Worth Reading.
Hopisen on MP Ian Lavery’s Home Loan – paid for by sick and injured miners.
Robert Mann on the origin of vicious political advertisements.
Bob Spink for Independent Police Complaints Commissioner? A small reminder from the ex-MP’s past courtesy of a real investigative journalist – Ted Pugh.
Hoaxstead Research continue to hound the fraudsters climbing on the #CSA bandwagon in exemplary fashion.
Moor Larkin is back with his superb research – skewering the slippery Louis Theroux and his duplicitous behaviour towards his former ‘friend’.
- Moor Larkin
April 16, 2016 at 6:35 pm -
Thanks for the “promote” Madame and all my best wishes x
- Major Bonkers
April 17, 2016 at 10:30 am -
I expect that most Raccoonistas also visit the Guido Fawkes website, but this post last week was a corker:
http://order-order.com/2016/04/15/londons-fourth-statue-of-simon-milton/
Simon Davis (not ‘Davies’) is also the councillor responsible for covering Westminster in poor sculpture, allowing its public spaces to be used – deliberately or not – to promote favoured galleries and – either ‘up and coming’ or ‘crap’ (your choice) – sculptors.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2011/10/blots-on-the-cityscape/
Personally, I wouldn’t mind so much, but his taste is so banal – he did away with the advisory committee – and kitsch that his choices of sculptures succeed in making an already unpleasant environment even worse. Scattered between the traffic on Park Lane and the Romanian beggars around Marble Arch, his sorry taste is inflicted on the rest of us, with only the pigeons able to express themselves freely, crapping on his Ozymandias-like monuments and flying away.
Ever wonder what happened to the various people who presided over Rotherham Council’s children services while a minimum of 1,400 girls were drugged, prostituted, and raped? Fortunately, their expertise is not going to waste:
https://rotherhampolitics.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/before-we-forget-those-who-have-gone/
As Peter Cook had it: ‘I have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly.’
- Jacqui thornton
April 17, 2016 at 6:26 pm -
Well done Anna for maintaining interest in Spink, we never did get to the bottom of his expenses in Castle Point.
After he was probably instrumental in Castle Point UKIPs humiliating defeat at the ballot box last year, you would have thought they would have admitted he is a bit of a local hot potato politically… but no. They have decided to hang their hat with him as their candidate for Essex Police and Crime Commissioner in the elections next month.
Whether one agrees with the post of PCC or not, surely it cannot be argued that the post should require someone of integrity? Ted Pugh’s diligent investigations into his expenses, and more, that you highlight above leave their choice looking more than questionable. Locals are well aware of his history, but this time he is casting his political net further afield in Essex to people who only remember him as, ‘Bob Spink, UKIPs first MP’.
On the surface his campaign for Essex PCC leaves him looking at best confused and at worst devious and economical with the truth. His campaign literature, although UKIP, is produced in Tory Blue. Maybe he has been reading too much Derren Brown? Among other potentially ambiguous assertions, he also maintained he was a Junior Minister at the Home Office, but that claim had a humiliating outing in the HoC this week when it was confirmed by Bercow that this was not the case.
He later claimed it was accepted ‘shorthand’ for Parliamentary Private Secretary but has since amended his literature.
His choice of agent for the PPC campaign may also be seen as slightly questionable for someone seeking to be Police & Crime Commissioner. It looks like his agent may have made false allegations of assault against a rival Tory candidate during last years elections, someone who Spink has a long uncomfortable history with. CPS, I believe, failed to examine the CCTV footage and proceeded with the prosecution but the judge, after seeing the footage when the defendant submitted it himself, found the defendant not guilty. His comments are telling. Having seen the footage, it looks rather intimidating on the part of the agent in my opinion, but I am no expert. This, and other official complaints made by Spink or those associated with him against the said defendant can be traced back many years, and could well be argued by some as walking a tightrope over a claim of harassment.
And then of course there is still the Green Belt, which is where I first came in after Anna’s piece ‘Where Are They Now – No. 283 Essex Man?’ Pleased to say our little campaign against his consortium and Redrow to develop the Green Belt woodland where I live may have borne fruit. In January our extensive lobbying of a supportive group of Councillors and an MP determined to make Localism work, paid off. The council voted to remove our site as designated for development from the New Local Plan they are drafting and it will retain its Green belt status. We have won the battle, but maybe not the war, time will tell. Spink is rumoured to be furious.
However, the locals are now asking questions why he was witnessed by numerous residents on adjoining land chatting with the workmen whilst a designated wildlife site and live badger sett was, allegedly, illegally razed to the ground one weekend in January. Luckily they had the foresight to photograph him. He was gone before the Police arrived, halted the work and sealed off the area. It is now subject to a Forestry Commission and a police investigation. He has made no attempt to contact the neighbours at all since the event, either to explain his presence, connection or offer any assistance or information. The police have been back, photographed the site and taken witness statements. Is the PCC candidate himself involved in a Police investigation one wonders? So many questions.
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/14211708.MP_and_residents_upset_by_lost_trees_in_Benfleet/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/129476140532865/?fref=ts
Curiouser still is the fact that when the Council sought to formalise this ancient bluebell wood and its abundant badgers, birds bats etc. it’s wildlife designation in the New Local Plan document in 2014, the Public Consultation Document shows a lone objection. From the partner of Bob Spink.
So much more seems to be bubbling under the surface where Bob is concerned. And if recent rumours are to be believed, so much more will soon rise to the top. Just need to scratch beneath the veneer. The whole situation still leaves me scratching my head though as to why UKIP, Farage included, seem so keen to indulge him when it so obviously can’t be doing the party image any good at all. Locally meanwhile, they maintain their usual stance of blocking any resident who asks anything awkward on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. So much for transparency.
- El Coyote
April 18, 2016 at 9:15 pm -
Many thanks for your continuing interest and support, Anna!
- Loadsamates
April 26, 2016 at 10:44 pm -
I didn’t read Moor’s article as “skewering slippery Louis Theroux”. What I took from it was that Theroux had remained remarkably loyal, if not heroically so, considering the circumstances.
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